Boy Alone

I was excited to read Karl Greenfeld's book on his autistic brother Noah, "Boy Alone". In my quest to read everything about autism, I still haven't found much on kids who were diagnosed before the current raging epidemic. Noah was diagnosed back in the early 1970s. It was well told, interesting, and full of the frustration Karl and his parents felt with the inadequate treatments, funding, and schooling that were available for Noah back then. I was really enjoying it, until about fifty pages to the end. Karl told how Noah started progressing: learning to finally speak, getting a real job, meeting a woman and falling in love, traveling on his own. It was so touching...and then Karl admits he made it all up. Noah never did really learn to speak, nor could he really live on his own. He never got a job, never fell in love. I was so angry, I felt cheated. Either write nonfiction or write fiction, whatever, I don't care, but don't toy with your readers like that. It was just wrong. I understood his point: that he and his family and his brother have all been cheated, gotten their hopes up only to have them dashed, etc. I still didn't like it, and had a really hard time finishing the book. I wanted to throw it out the window, but it belongs to the library :-)